Hi, we've got 3 charts for you today:
US stock markets are on track for their worst ever January, with the S&P 500 index down roughly 10% since the start of the year.
But after a remarkably solid 2021, and 2020, just how nervous are investors actually feeling today? One measure worth checking is the Volatility Index, also known as the "fear index".
The Volatility Index — or VIX — is a good indicator of how nervous markets are because it tracks how much investors expect stock prices to fluctuate over the coming month. When the VIX is higher it means investors expect prices to move around a lot (i.e. they're more uncertain), and when it's lower it means they don't expect prices to move around much.
The latest reading on the VIX is about 30, which is well above the average of about 18-19 from the last 15 years, but still some way from the readings of 80+ during the "call your family and go full panic mode" of the global financial crisis of '08-09 or March 2020.
Reasons to worry
If the market was a person, telling a friend everything they were worried about, they'd have a lot to say:
Figuring out which of those is most responsible for the market jitters on any one day is more art than science, but all 3 together certainly aren't helping.
One individual company that enjoys when markets are full of activity is Robinhood, but the investing platform hasn't had a good 12 months.
One year ago it was at the center of the GameStop saga, which - despite some negative press - led to a surge in users and revenue ahead of its own IPO. Retail traders were buying more complicated financial instruments like options, and eventually crypto assets.
But Robinhood's fortune has faded.
As GameStop mania subsided, the negative press lingered, and everything went into reverse for Robinhood. Last quarter the company revealed that active user numbers had started falling and that the company was making less from each user.
Those two things were a potent combination, and together contributed to a big reversal in the company's revenue, which dropped 35% last quarter. All of that has left Robinhood's share price in the low teens, down more than 81% from the highs of last summer.
Can't find something good to watch in the evenings? That's on you, unfortunately.
According to the latest data from FX Networks, there have never been more new original scripted series, with 559 hitting the small screen last year across cable, streaming services and broadcast TV in the US.
Death by choice
In 2010, there were just 216 new original scripted series, meaning that in just the last decade, your options for viewing have almost tripled (presuming you can access them all, which admittedly is a different question altogether). Overwhelmed by options? You're probably not alone.
1) The CEO of YouTube mentioned the word "creators" 52 times in her annual letter, which also cited research from Oxford Economics that the "YouTube economy" supported 394,000 jobs in the US.
2) How has the popularity of each movie genre changed in the last century? Some great work by Bo McCready. RIP Westerns.
3) Rise of the machines: fantastic chart and story from FiveThirtyEight showing how computers caught up to, matched and then rapidly outpaced the best human chess players in the world. Related viewing: "AlphaGo - The Movie", the story of how AI took on the ancient Chinese game of Go.
4) Join Minerva for an active learning workshop on decision making and learn more about the Master in Decision Analysis - it might be the first in a series of excellent decisions you make in your career.**
5) Microsoft made more than $6 billion a month in its latest quarter, with revenue up 20% on the year before.
6) Adele was the only artist last year to sell more than 1 million copies of an album last year, underlining how much the industry has changed since the advent of streaming.
**This is sponsored content.
